I love facilitating groups to reflect and plan their future and delight when they laugh, connect and enjoy themselves.

I was so engrossed in the session that I forgot to take pics – boo Liz.

The Local Government Safety Officers Network meets 4 times a year for 3 hours and I was commissioned to facilitate a session that would help them explore the issues and needs that the network could meet in 2016 and beyond.

I designed a very short survey monkey survey and sent it to all the local councils around WA. Nearly 40 surveys were returned and I used the results to inform the design of the 3 hour session.

A bug bear that many people have about meetings is the sheer time it takes to go around a group and get updates. When there are 30 plus people in the room then you can imagine the time it takes.

I like to facilitate sessions that work on a number of levels: – intra personal, interpersonal and whole group. When you work on all these levels then you are ensuring that everyone can contribute. The networking session went really well on all these levels and people had many pockets of time to  network and chat.

There was a clear purpose to the session and the group achieved them really well. I thoroughly enjoyed the people in the group and am meeting with some of the individuals to discuss further work.

The evaluation of the day rated it very highly and people said they felt engaged and enthusiastic.

Some key results:

1. 8 people volunteered to be on a working group to help guide the networks activities in 2016. This was quite remarkable and I think it was a result of people feeling like the session had engaged them and provided direction
2. 4 local councils volunteered to host the 4 network gatherings in 2016. I think this was a result of people knowing they’d have the support of the working group
3. there was enthusiastic agreement for a 1 day gathering later in 2016 so regional people could attend and provide best practice information, networking and up to date research
4. key issues challenging people’s work were identified
5. the needs the network could meet were teased out
6. people got a better sense of how the Google Group could be used more effectively as a support and information sharing tool
7. people had time to talk about things that concerned them as well as informally network over a lovely lunch provided by City of Melville

All in all it was a rather good session that had very practical results.

I wrote a report summarising the session as well as a survey summary. Not sure if I can make them public.